Amongst Thieves
by Garmonbozia
Summary: 10/13 - He thinks he's Danny Ocean this week, all fun and games and killer soundtracks.  But the Doctor could be about to learn, that old saying about honour among thieves?  That might be just an old saying after all.
1. Chapter 1

I've never done a heist before.

'Done', is that right? Does one 'do' a heist? Or does on 'go on a' heist? Or do you _stage_ a heist, now, I know you can do that, _stage_ one, but that sort of implies that you yourself are not involved. Not that I'm saying you're involved, I mean me. Then again, you all are sitting there, knowing all this, and keeping your mouths shut, aren't you? Accessories, that's called. I imagine none of you have been accessories before. That's alright, I've never been a thief before.

_Exciting_.

Anyway, there's time yet to work out the grammar of the thing. First, I have to be a scientist again.

Conversation between the Ponds has been getting rather heated re: the relative merits of the sequels to Ocean's Eleven. Even though there's only four of us. I was watching from other side of the console until I realized Jessica was doing the same and pulled her back out of the way. When married couples argue, things can sometimes be thrown. Heavy, dangerous, head-clunking-in things.

That's one of the things I learned this week.

They are, however, interrupted by a loud, sharp ding. They stop, and both look around at me. Unlike Jessica, who walks immediately away. Looking for somewhere to hide, probably. She's heard that noise twice before and it's never ended well for her. That's over, now, though, it's ready this time.

'What's ready?' you cry (some of you in good old Companion Spirit, some of you in utter confusion).

Why, my dear accessories, only my latest and greatest invention. The Ponds follow me, down the old east stairwell that got shuffled and is now in the west, past the cattery, through the aquarium tunnel I've always wanted and never knew was here and into the chronocytology lab.

Don't worry if you've never heard of chronocytology. It's only existed since Tuesday. It is, for future reference, the study of time signatures present in the cellular biology of living organisms. And if you ever want a bit of space at a party, you can tell that that's what you do for living, because _everybody_ stops talking.

In the centre of the lab there is a table, with a two-inch edge on it and half-full of what looks like water and is really an incredibly delicate balance of maintenance chemicals and growth proteins. It's a work of genuine genius in itself, that liquid.

I look up into the blank, expectant faces of the Ponds and decide not to explain that.

Floating in the liquid is a sheet, pale, fleshy pink in colour and looking very much like the layer of fat one might peel off slow-cooked pork. Bit thinner than that. Slightly see-through. Wet and milky with my new miracle fluid.

"Pond, grab an end."

"_No_."

"Rory, grab an end."

"Amy, grab an end."

"Oh, for God's sake." So finally she does as I asked, reaches tentatively into the liquid and picks it up at the corner.

"That's it. Careful; don't tear it. There aren't enough strawberry laces in the world to buy another one."

Pond isn't listening. Pond has seized right up, holding it at arm's length and as much leg's length as gravity will allow, face puckered like there's some foul smell in the room. Which, to be fair, there is. But it's the stench of genius and I will not have it derided. Yet all Pond has to say for herself is, "Where's this going? Quickly, Doctor, where's this going?"

I sigh and guide her to the wall opposite the table, where the lightbox hangs, and we throw the _chronocytological map_ up like an X-Ray.

You understand, I am not just explaining this process to you, but to future practitioners of my brave new science. Hence the detail and italics and the new scientifical terms. Bear with me, I'm _starting_ something here.

This map, grown from a single time-exposed cell of Jessica's being, is a complete history of all her temporal and transmaterial travels. Now, with eighty-one Time Lords and heaven knows what else under her belt, rich and varied those travels may be. But the one united factor of every single trip before she ended up in my box, was that _Owner_ of hers.

Those are sarcastic italics, not science italics.

What I mean is, the return journey always ended in the same place. The very centre, the core of her temporal history, is the place we've been humorously referring to as Silence HQ. And I can _see_, physically see, that place now. A little dark cluster, like a tangle of nerves, at the centre of the fatty mass. All her other stops, little ports of call, are specks radiating from that point, but those are unimportant. I take a pair of tweezers and, from that central splodge of dark, I peel a scrap of _chronocytological_ _matter_ while I am explaining to the Ponds what they're seeing.

Rory, in the same instant in which he grasps the concept, groans, physically reels, and braces himself against the wall. Pond jumps to him, holding him up.

"What happened, are you alright?"

"I just imagined what his map would look like."

Fair point. I imagine something between a star map and the vanilla seeds in a good ice cream. Maybe a fading, dispersing splodge, somewhere off centre. Drfiting steadily farther from centre, I suppose.

"My map doesn't matter. This one does."

The cytochronological matter is to be placed under a microscope, where at the correct magnification it will resolve itself into a numerical sequence. Co-ordinates.

Co-ordinates which, as I transcribe them, seem awfully familiar.

"No… No, that _can't_ be right, that _can't_ be wrong."

"Rory, poke him, he's gotten stuck again."

I spin on Pond, and I would probably be very scary if I could take my eyes off those numbers and what they're saying to me, "'Can't be right,' Pond, as in 'not possible'. 'Can't be wrong' as in 'not allowed to be wrong'."

_I_ can't be wrong, so I'm going back to the console, so I can plug in these co-ordinates and the _Tardis_ can be the one who's wrong. I will be unsure until the Tardis has told me to be sure.

The Ponds are right at my heels. They're getting very good as following purposefully, as though they know what's going on and are just as concerned as I am. It's very comforting.

I reach the console, and type nothing.

I stop.

There's an envelope propped on the typewriter. Which I didn't put there. Which, I confirm with a quick glance around, neither Pond nor Mr Pond put there. And the writing is neat, legible and unexpressive, which rules out Jessica. Aside from which I recognize the writing. Just wish I didn't, that's all.

There is a letter in the envelope.

It reads: _You're absolutely right about the co-ordinates. Once you get the time right it will all make sense. By the way, well done tricking Mummy and Daddy into thinking you know what you're doing. Don't worry about it, though. All the answers are on your doorstep. Keep this letter._

Across the console from us, there used to be a gun lying on my chair. River left it behind when she stormed off the other day. It's not there anymore.

In utter shock, I can only exhale, "She never leaves, does she? I mean, she just _never_ stays away for _any_ length of time, she's just _always _here, isn't she?"

"Who is?" Pond asks. She steps up to read over my shoulder and I tuck the letter very quickly away.

"Rory, get the door, would you?"

And it's all very predictable; he begins to ask what on earth I could possibly be talking about, and is cut off by the knock at the door. He then promptly goes to get the door, like he was asked.

They should all just do what I ask them to do the first time. That's where it always ends up anyway. The rest is just defiance and _delays_, endless _delays_.

While Rory is between us and the door, Pond steps up, asks me quietly, confidentially, "That letter was from River, wasn't it? What's going on between you two?"  
>"What ever could you mean, Pond?"<p>

"I mean she knows everything before we've even been there and she's… _helping_? She's helping, Doctor, isn't she?"

'As opposed to what, Amelia?' That's the question I want to ask her. Those are the word I'm all but ready to put to her. I want to see where she's going with this, just what exactly is going on in her mind right now that would make her say a thing like that. 'Helping' as opposed to _what_, exactly, does she think River could possibly be up to? Why would River do anything else but help and why would she help if not for the best of reasons, with the best intentions?

Of course, I say nothing.

Nor would I, even if we weren't momentarily distracted.

Rory, you see, opens the Tardis door. Instantaneously declares, "Oh, anybody but _you_," and throws a punch which both Pond and I not only hear but _feel_ connecting.

So there's that to deal with…


	2. Chapter 2

By the time we reach the door, Rory is helping his poor hapless victim up from the floor. "Oh my God. Oh my God, I punched you. Why did I do that?"

"Listen, mate," the man says, after he's cracked his jaw back into place, "don't ask and don't worry about it."

But Rory's not listening to him. Rory turns to me, wide-eyed, looking at this hands like a murderer and says, "Doctor, I punched him and I don't know why I did it except I had to and it felt really right."

The man dusts himself off behind him. Looks at me, shaking his head, 'Please don't start this.'

"Of course you punched him, Detective. He kissed Amy that time, remember?"

That, apparently, is how River intends for this heist to work. The man who just arrived and got punched is that plumber from before. You know, with all the tattoos and the metal in his face and the black hair like porcupine spines. We met inside Rory's head that time? When everything else was 1940s? And Bogart gave me a black eye? Remember? Of course you remember.

Liam Reilly, the mind thief from Leeds.

Amy and Rory are shrugging at each other. The former knows who Reilly is, but not what I'm talking about. It was, after all, a sort of computerize dream of Amy that got kissed, not the real thing. That would be even more awkward. Rory, on the other hand, knows all of this, in the same way your computer still knows your old password even after you've changed it. He couldn't say it out loud, but he knows it used to be there.

Reilly finally shakes off the impact. While the Ponds continue their wordless discussion of what the hell could be going on, he steps up to me and extends a hand. "General. Your wife sent me."

Silence falls. The Ponds look round.

Carefully, I ask him, "When are you coming from?"

"With all due respect, sir, I'm not allowed to tell you that."

"On whose authority? River's? Just tell me, I'll deal with it."

"No, sir, yours."

"In which case you definitely have to tell me."

"You said you'd say that."

Amy and Rory both have uncapped marker pens in their hands, forearms bared and ready. Every time somebody calls me 'General' the Silence show up. Except for Reilly here, as I recall. Nothing happened last time he used it, except that somebody outside reached into the program and extracted him before I could make him explain.

New Theory: Two kinds of people call me 'General' – nice people and not-nice people.

Before I can quite see what he's looking at, Reilly leans around me. Looks up to the gallery and waves. "Hello, you."

Jessica. Holding the corner of the wall just enough to peer around it.

"You can come down," I tell her, "He's alright. I think…"

"You'll like this, love," Reilly shouts to her. She's coming quietly, carefully, down the stairs and his voice jolts her. Not afraid, just wary. Reilly swings a black backpack down from his shoulder and starts to unpack the contents across the console. Missing all the important bits, not knocking against anything that could kill us, which is a difficult thing to do and something I myself have frequent trouble with. As he does so, speaks past me _again_, which is really rather rude of him, and still at Jessica, "Need you to nip back to the White Place, clunk old Short-Arse round the head for us."

"Am knowing that. Doctor told it."

Yes, how dare he steal my promise. I always meant for Jessica to get that particular hit in, whether it meant anything or not. Now he's reducing it to a mere part of the task. It's not even a treat anymore.

Before I can question him, though, "Everything's all ready to go, sir. You and the missus have it all planned out. The program is already installed and just needs to be activated."

"Installed where?" I ask, "In who?"

"In Kovarian, sir. Who else?"

There is a lingering quiet then, the hum of growing smiles. Pond, who had previously been preoccupied with denying the whole _kiss_ debacle, suddenly skips up, leaning over the new equipment on the console as if it were a display of jewels in a museum.

"You mean to tell me that somebody gets to go in and run around inside that twisted, vicious mind, taking anything that's not nailed down and privy to all the thoughts and secrets."

"Mrs Williams," Reilly says, "That is pretty much spot on."

Voice terse, _barely_ restrained, "Doctor, I would like to volunteer for that part of the mission. I am willing to take on that particular burden and I'd like to point out that I'm the first one to call it, so it's obviously mine."

While I explain to her that she's untrained, that there's a reason Reilly's here and it's because he has experience in these things, that I'll try and have him bring back something embarrassing for us all to enjoy, while I'm letting Amy down gently, I watch Reilly. He pretends not to notice, still poking and arranging the wires and anodes, but he knows I'm watching.

'Mrs Williams', he called her. And never made eye-contact. Answered her normally, _respectfully_, but with no warmth, no friendliness.

And that's the thing about Pond, she _makes_ you feel all warm and fluffy. You don't get a say in it. Especially the first time you meet her. That's why she's such a good companion, you see, they notice her and not me.

Which means that Reilly and Pond have met before, and she's done something he doesn't like.

But I can't think of anything that's happened up until now.

Which probably means she hasn't done it yet.

Things to Keep An Eye On – 1) People calling me General and 2) Any unpleasantness with Pond.

So there's that to deal with. Also the fact that she's doing an awful lot of pouting and moaning about the two 'outsiders' (which I can only take to mean Reilly and Jessica) getting to have all the fun.

But oh, what a perfect idea now descends. Keep everybody happy, keep Pond and Reilly at opposite ends of the job, keep everything professional.

"Right!" I announce, "Gather round. It's time for that great scene where I lay out what's supposed to happen and then we go to work, and the job is not without a bump or two, but we all come out unscathed."

"Rory, I thought I told you to throw that _Leverage_ boxset into a star?"

"I forgot, Amy, sorry."

They'd better not even think of such a thing; I'm not halfway through it. And I'm reaching for the record player, for my background heist music, and it is Pond's hand that reaches back and stops it. Just because _she's_ not getting what she wants.

Anyway, I get everyone on one side of the console so I can talk to them all at once.

"I think I've got this figured out. I'm going to go through and Mr Reilly is going to correct me should I get anything wrong. I'd like to point out that I won't actually be wrong, I just won't be right _yet_, seeing as it's me who puts all this together somewhere in the future."

Vicious under the weight of all her crushing disappointments, "Get on with it…"

I explain:

There is currently a dormant computer program within Kovarian's brain. We send Jessica in, via manipulator, to activate it. She returns to us for her own safety.

Then, as guided and controlled by Yours Truly, Reilly enters the program. He gathers all sorts of information, including the location of the Keeper's infokey.

Rory interrupts. I'm actually surprised I got this far before it happened. "No, wait. I thought we were going in here to get River?"

"And she will be where the infokey is. Which we also need to recover. Two birds, one stone and _are we sure_ there isn't another phrase for that? I just don't like killing all these birds all the time and-"

Biting off every word like a bullet, this from Pond; "Get. On. With. It."

Reilly will also be able to extract plans, routes, security codes, as and when they are required. These will be passed from the program to a separate terminal from which the physical half of the heist can be controlled.

"And that's where we come in, isn't it, Doctor?"

No, Pond, we're sending Jessica. She knows her way around the place, she can defend herself, and the Silence won't risk killing her.

All being well, that should be it. Our dual thieves are extracted safely and with everything they went in for, and all is once again well in the Tardis. All caught up, an end to day after day lurching from one crisis to the next, back to adventures and pointless fun and Jammie Dodgers and occasionally getting a night off from saving ourselves to occasionally save the world.

Life used to be like that, didn't it? I'm not making that up?

I must admit, I get lost somewhat in the daydream of how things used to be. Pond has a question. She has to ask me twice, and she is not in the mood to do so. Charges right up and shoves me at the shoulder for the second try, "So where does that leave us, then?"

"Safe, Pond. Here. Chez Tardis."

"No. No way. This is about _River_, Doctor, your wife, my _daughter_, there's no way I'm just going to _sit_ here and-"  
>"Pond, somebody needs to control the transfer between the two separate terminals. I will be hair-close to unconscious and basically useless. I need you to feed information from Kovarian's mind to Jessica's ear. Without a wire in between, they're just two empty, useless tin cans."<p>

"Oh," she says. Mildly, starting to smile again. Appeased. "I'd sort of be, like, the hub of it all."

"Amelia, without you, we're all worthless."

"Oh." And she wanders back off to Rory, done with me. While her back is turned I mouth at her husband, 'Watch her'.

It's personal, you see. Hard to blame her when it's personal. She's only human, after all.


	3. Amy

This is better. Me, in a spinning-chair, with a headset on, this is better. This feels more like _doing_ something. See, at least this time the Doctor doesn't just want me to sit back and admire him being a genius. He needs me. And he trusts me enough to put this entirely in my hands. Everybody weak and vulnerable except that I'm here to keep them all safe. Up to and including River. I get so few opportunities to protect her. It's usually the other way around. Now, today, now I get to be useful, for once.

Also, the spinning-chair-and-headset combo really, _really_ works for me. I can tell from the way Rory looks at me.

I'm seated at a curved bank of controls, most of which I'm not going to touch because I don't know what they do, but I can manage the mouse and the keyboard. I have four screens in front of me. Three of them are currently blank. One shows a map, three-dimensional, green lines on black. And the more I look at it the more I know it from somewhere.

It brings up feelings of tension and apprehension. Also, strangely, of being felt up, for some reason.

Oh, no, not felt up – patted down.

"Doctor? Doctor, this can't be right. This map can't be where the Silence set up shop."

"Yes it can," he answers, dully. Some hint in behind of what he let me see yesterday, the dark, hateful anger at himself. But everybody else is still in the room, so for now I put off asking how Silence Headquarters and Stormcage can be the same place. He's grateful for it too. Instead, he puts one hand on the back of my chair and leans to point forward at the screen. "Now listen carefully. This white dot here? That's Kovarian. I'm tracking the program already installed."

"Yeah, who did that?"

"Three guesses and the first two don't count."

"Oh. River."

"Precisely. That's how we know where Kovarian is. Now, we're going to shift Jessica in using a manipulator. She's going to show up as a blue dot. All you have to do is guide the blue dot to the white dot, easy peasy."

"I think I can manage that, Doctor."

"Don't get smart, just do it right. Next time, I won't be here and you'll be balancing a much more difficult journey with a transplanted infostream of impossible importance."

I have to admit, when he wants to make a point he knows how to go about it.

Reilly goes out of the room to get ready for the next part. The Doctor goes to Jessica where she's warming up in the hallway. Rory wheels over to me. He too is enjoying these chairs.

"You're the voice in the earpiece," he grins. "Like on TV." I smile back, as much as I can. "You're alright with this, aren't you? I mean, no pressure or anything but-"

"But the fate of our daughter and very possibly that whole war he keeps going on about are probably hanging on my involvement."

"Yeah. So… bit of pressure, then."

"But you're here, aren't you? You're going to say here?"

"Absolutely. And then maybe later when things are a bit quieter you could explain to me this whole computer-program-in-the-brain thing? Because nobody ever let me be very clear on that."

"Yeah, sorry. We didn't think it would ever come up again."

The door opens and the Doctor returns with Jessica. "And be _careful_," he's saying, and she nods. "And for heaven's sake, don't get _caught_," and she nods. "And be _careful_. And be quick. But be careful."

"Am to be careful and quick and not caught, Doctor. It understands." See? Even she's getting bored with him _talking_ now. Always, relentlessly _talking_. He opens his mouth to go on, but she walks past him. Up to me and stands in front of my chair. "Amypond am alright with Jessica?"

"Of course," I say, quick and definite, like it was a stupid question to ask. But it wasn't, not really. Jessica knows that. Sometimes, when Rory's defending her for _no_ reason, or when River brings her little presents from wherever she's been, or when the Doctor lets her sit at his feet like a house cat, I just don't get it. Really, I honestly just don't understand. And yes, maybe, on occasion, that comes across as hostility. But I have no real, heartfelt problem with the girl herself.

Well, except that time I read her prison file. About the espionage and treason and murder. That time, I did nearly attack her in a shut-off lift. But that was in the future, wasn't it? None of that's happened yet.

That, come to think of it, was the last time we were all at Stormcage.

But today? Today everything is fine.

So the Doctor steps up and pulls Jessica away from everybody. Gives her the manipulator and the co-ordinates and then holds up something else; like a plastic keyring with a little silver disc on one side. "Activation key. Apply it to Kovarian's eye-drive once she's unconscious, wait for the word from Amy and then get out of there, understood?"  
>"Knows. Him told it. <em>Times<em>-times."

"Every time," he sighs. "The longer you keep them the cheekier they get." He looks at me when he says that, you know. Looks at me until I lift an eyebrow at him and then he looks quite quickly away. Flaps a hand and says, "Well, if you're all so brilliant, off you go then. Take it away. I'll just sit here and watch, shall I? You can all show me how it's done."

Welcome to my world, Doctor.

I turn back to my bank of screens. Jessica stands beyond it, activation key in one hand, manipulator set on the other wrist. "Ready to go?"

She nods to me, presses that one last button and vanishes.

The little blue dot the Doctor promised appears on screen, in a side room on the second circle. "Out the door and turn left." The dot doesn't move, not an inch. "Jessica?"

"Yeah. Goes."

That little voice in the earpiece. Something sad about it. If we weren't quite so busy, I'd ask if she knew the room she'd landed into. But she's moving now, only stopping for a moment at the door. There's a noise, probably small to the world, but loud in my ear, of ash stake scraping metal.

"The lock," the Doctor explains. "Just forcing the ash through the tumblers."

I cover my microphone. "Of course. I knew that."

"Oh, obviously. That's why you jumped out of the seat. You're going to tell her to take the next right, aren't you?"

"_Obviously_."

"Although, there are alternative routes that wouldn't take her along the gallery like that. She'll be awfully visible."

Microphone uncovered. "Jessica, straight ahead to the stairwell, up to the first circle."

"Capital planning, Pond. A slight detour in favour of absolute discretion. We'll make a criminal mastermind of you yet."

Microphone covered again. "Doctor, shouldn't there be alarms and sirens going off? She just… _teleported_ in there."

He eyes Rory cautiously. Rory hasn't caught on yet, about the map, about circles and side rooms that used to be cells, about Stormcage. "Teleportation is the _one_ thing they think that facility is protected against. They don't scan for it, because it's not supposed to happen. That manipulator, however, is a non-standard technology. It was altered to let its one careful previous owner hop in and out at will."

River. He means River. Reilly brought that manipulator back with him from whatever future they plotted all this from; she must have given it to him.

"You're not watching the blue dot, Pond."

The white Kovarian dot is headed straight for it.

Microphone uncovered, "_Left_, Jessica. Sorry." She doesn't go left. She ducks back beyond the stairwell door and presses it closed so gently I don't even hear it.

"Tall people," she says. "Owner am not being alone."

What do I do now? Find her somewhere to hide until Kovarian needs a bit of me-time? Or do I…? What are the other options? There must be other options, there always are, the Doctor always rattles them off while he's picking one to show how clever he is for spotting them all. What do I do? He's watching me now, waiting to see what I do, and what do I do? What can I do?

Eventually, he crosses the room, takes the headset from me and holds it to his own head. "Jessica, it's me. Come out. We'll try again later. We lose nothing this time unless you get spotted, so just hop back here and-"

"But am knowing answer, Doctor."

Oh yeah, she can say that to him, but she couldn't have helped_ me_ out.

"Jessica, _no_, come back, right now."

"Riversing," she says. "Keeper-Key. Not has time for try-again."

Which, to me, sounds like she has a point. But the Doctor goes on, no, she should come back, she has to come back. I don't see her manipulating in anywhere, though. The longer you keep them, eh Doctor? At any rate, she's just not passing up the chance to deck Kovarian. And I don't blame her. I only regret that I don't have CCTV or something to watch it on.

There's another wrenching sound, shearing metal this time.

"Jessica?" the Doctor is saying. That warning tone which means he's only just keeping himself from shouting at her. "Jessica, what are you doing?"

"Am needing a throwingthing."

The blue dot moves one more time, very quickly, from the stairwell out onto the gallery again. The red dot is just past her now, and still going. But then there's an almighty crash, metal on metal. The red dot stops, Jessica jumps back to safety. Not so far back, though, that we don't hear;

"Well? What are you standing there looking at each other for? Go and see what that was!"

That voice. It cuts through me. A voice through a hatch in the ceiling of the white box. And I wasn't always there, of course, I was on the Tardis, only I wasn't. None of it. I wasn't real. What was real was her, leaning in at me. Her saying I had two minutes more with my own baby. Her taking away everything I ever wanted to promise a child at the very beginning of their life.

From stopped, she starts back the way she came. Jessica's door opens and pulls her through.

I don't get to watch, but I get to listen.

"_You_," is always good. You hear somebody spit that word out and you know you're doing your job as one of the good guys. "_You_," she says, or nearly says. She doesn't get to finish it. I get to at least hear somebody finally knock the smug little smile off that face.

"Amy," says the Doctor, snapping me out of a moment spent enjoying that. He's handing me back my headset. "You're waiting for the white dot to turn green. That's the program activated. The moment it does that, get Jessica out of there."

He's annoyed at us now, you can tell from his voice. There's a childish part of me that wants to say it's because Jessica was right and he was wrong. That's not it, though. It's because he knows he has to leave us to it soon and he doesn't want to. Didn't want to before and certainly not now that she's gone and disobeyed him. He needs to know he can trust us and he does that, apparently, by not trusting us.

The dot pulses green before it finally turns. "Jessica, that's us, back you-" She's standing behind the monitors. "-Come…"

"What did you think you were doing?" he starts immediately.

"Thinking 'distracting Tall People am making Owner to be alone'."

"Don't be smart with me, Jessica. When you're told to come in, you come in."

She looks away from him, down at her feet, scratching the back of her neck. "Not to be punishing her, please, but her am having done this othertimes and him not."

Rory winces, trying to figure that one out. Either I'm getting used to her or it's just a familiar sentiment. Under my breath, I translate; 'All due respect, Doctor, but I've done this before.'

Makes you wonder what he's done to her lately that suddenly she feels like she can give him backchat. Jessica's developing a bit of an attitude that wasn't there before. Before, you could never have imagined her going against him, doing anything that might have been of any detriment to him. Not that I can see that happening now. No. Nothing like that. Just that she's getting there.

The Doctor puts a hand on my chair and turns me to him. "Amelia, whatever happens later on, if you see her getting anywhere close to trouble, call her out. And Jessica, if you hear Amy call you, what do you do?"

She looks away again, replies through gritted teeth. "Comes back."

"It's all about to begin and I need to know I can trust you all."

Told you so.

Nobody replies to him so he sighs and goes on.

"Pond, watch the end screen. Anything I get from Liam's feed will show up there. The first thing will be the location of the infokey. Let Jessica think about it and then send me back the details of anything you need. You remember what I showed you, it's just like a message system."

"We'll manage, Doctor," I tell him.

"You need to do more than _manage_, Amelia, there's no second chance here."

"I said, _we'll manage_! Now go."

A moment's eye contact. He stops glaring at me and leans down to kiss my forehead. Mutters an offhand, unmeant apology to Rory about that, then goes. And it's just us, this time, isn't it? It really, truly is _just_ us.

"Jessica?"

"Will maah-nige, Amypond."


	4. Chapter 4

This can't possibly have been a good idea. My future self and future wife can't have had this much faith in Amy, can they? No harm meant, no insult meant, it's just I'm never entirely sure what way she's going to go. Fire-breathing mummy komodo Amy, that's one option, one road we could go down. Or rabbit-in-headlights wide-eyed innocent Amy, that's another way. And neither of those ways is going to be very useful should it all go wrong while I'm semicomatose and capable of doing little more than rattle off lines of binary.

"You know you're saying all this out loud, don't you?" Reilly says to me. He's adjusting a chair so he can rest back in it. Already hooked up to a computer and a heart rate monitor, testing the code monitor in his other hand. "And you do know they're all only in the next room?"

"That was rather the point, Mr Reilly, I need her to hear."

"If it makes any odds to you now, General, you just call me Liam later on."

"You call me the Doctor, then."

Without lifting his eyes from the code reader he says, quietly, as though it's not really cheating if nobody else hears it. "Don't be scared of the General. Loads of people are, but don't you be."

I like this one, you know. He can stay, when it's over. If he wants to, I mean. Liam can hang about. See, there we go. Calling him 'Liam', all first-name-terms and all. He helps me fix one of the monitor straps around my wrist and everything.

The set up is simple – two chairs side by side, facing in opposite directions. A computer between and both of us hooked to it. Liam completely comatose in the physical world, his consciousness transplanted entirely into the program. Me in between the two worlds, aware of mine but living his. And completely useless here should it all go slightly-turbo-mental as it almost certainly will.

When I get a hold of me, later on, when I'm thinking all of this anew and for the very first time, I'm going to take myself by the hair and bang my head against the wall until I start making sense again. I'm going to make absolutely sure I pay for this.

"Have you done this before?" Liam asks. He's fixing me with the last of the anodes of the psychic interface that will, theoretically, provided nothing goes wrong which it probably will, allow me to be part of the world in Kovarian's mind without ever actually going there. This, at least, is a blessing. I don't envy Liam having to walk in this mad place. Wonder what it'll look like.

"Never from outside the program. The last time you met us, that was the first."

"Oh, when you just wandered in and started poking holes in the delicate fabric of-"

"Get on with it."

He laughs, settling himself in the other chair. "You have about the same amount of power as your average poltergeist. You can interfere with the environment but not with anything in it. Anything you want, you can write it in, but I need to pass it out to you. Understood?"

"Yes."

"Sitting comfortably?"

"Yes."

"Then I'll begin."

"Wait!"

"You alright?" Oh, yes, perfectly, but he was rather taking the lead and I like to feel a bit more in control than I currently do, so I just thought I'd take a moment to myself before it starts.

"Fine. Go ahead."

It happens quicker than I expected. A couple of keystrokes. I don't get time to close my eyes. Very disorientating, sickening. Like using a manipulator, but without the sensation of travel. Just a drop, like when you dream of falling, and here we are.

I'm invisible, a voice in Liam's head. I see the room in third person, from just behind him.

It's very white. I probably could have guessed that from outside if you'd given me time. And the ceiling has a massive black patch giving a steady drip of water to a puddle on the floor.

"That's not a good sign," Liam says. "Something in here knows it needs repairs and _Christ Jesus_!" This last is not, in fact, something he discovers in the room with him, but just an exclamation. A little something has tapped his shoulder to say hello.

"Liam, meet Daisy." Daisy is a small silver orb with a face drawn on, floating at about head height. She's the distant cousin of Suicide Alleviation Device I met on a cliff once. Don't ask, long story. "Anything that's not nailed down goes into Daisy, alright? She's my feedback device."

"I'm not used to working with a partner," he says, and bumps under her little round chin with a fist, likes the way she bobs in the air.

"The location of the infokey should be close by. I wrote it to be the first thing you'd find. Barring Daisy, of course."

Thing is, there isn't much here. Liam turns around to give me the full view of the room. White tiles, three white walls and one accented in grey, a small digital fireplace. That last bit strikes me as a bit homely for the Kovarian I know. I suppose she must have started out as a human being.

Fire and water, but not much else.

"Liam, the drip."

"Yeah, what about it?"

"The _leak_?" As in an information leak. Something Kovarian knows she shouldn't be giving away.

"Oh, God," he mutters, going to it. "She's one of these, is she? Open up, Daisy." Obediently, Daisy's upper half folds around into the lower. Liam pulls her around in the air and positions her under the drip. "Two kinds of mind, Doctor," he says, standing by it. "Minds like your mate Rory's, where everything's nice and easy and physical and you just have to catch it. And minds like this one, that see you coming and get symbolic. Hide everything. And then you get the Freudian ones and I'll not even go into that, Doctor; you'd blush."

Best not go into it, then…

I, at any rate, am rather more caught up in the eerie feeling of having become psychic. As water drips into poor Daisy's fake, dreamworld circuitry, I'm coming to understand the location of the infokey. As Kovarian knows it. Not in a way where I'm given a map or directions, but as _she knows it_. It is in the cryptography room. Simple as that. Every syllable is another drip. Every drip is another few letters typed on a computer here in the real world, which I can only see sometimes and only when I'm not really thinking about it, and transferred to Pond.

"Feels funny, don't it?" Liam laughs at me. He's closing up Daisy, studying the door of this first room. "I've never been on that end myself, but Doctor Song's never got used to it, I can tell you that."

"Let me guess; she goes a bit power mad."

"Spot-on, Doctor, however did you figure it out?"

Simple. I just considered, on a scale of one to those ten minutes I spent in the Pandorica, how terrified I'd be if River had telepathic powers. And the readings went off the scale. But he wasn't really asking, so I don't tell him that.

"Listen, get out of that room. We have a minute or two now while Amy and Jessica locate the cryptography room and decide what they need."

"What about Rory?"  
>"Oh, he'll know what to do. When the time comes… But you need to get somewhere where there are more loose objects, because this is an opportunity I can't afford not to exploit."<p>

And here in the real world, I am desperately programming the code for various keywords. 'Silence', 'General', 'Question', 'Doctor', 'War', 'River Song'. Things I need to know and probably shouldn't. "Anything, Liam, that's not nailed down."

"You're the boss, boss."

I'm not in there with my code reader, so it's quicker for him to pick the lock. Liam is there virtually, which means his skills are as good as he believes them to be. If he thinks I can do it in twenty seconds or less, he'll do it in eighteen. If he thought for an instant he could knock the door clean off its hinges without Kovarian's mind ringing a ten bell alarm around him, that's what he'd be able to do.

It takes a minute and a half that we don't have.

"Why do you think so little of yourself?"

"Because I grew up on Earth."

"Oh, you know, I am _sick_ of this downer attitude towards humans and humanity. You find it _everywhere_. They're _vermin_, they're _stupid_, they're _apes_. They're _survivors_, is what they are, and don't you dare tell me so are cockroaches."

"No, Doctor. I mean I was a crap thief in the real world."

"Oh. Sorry."

"It's alright now; I rob heads instead of houses. I'm not half bad at this."

The first door opens. The second room also has a white tiled floor, and three white walls. One here accented in a sort of bluish grey, which is the closest thing we've seen to colour. It looks to be a sort of living room, if living rooms were occasionally made out of breezeblocks and Lego bricks.

Which, heaven knows, some of the fashion-planets I've been on…

Everything has angles and edges. And there's another of those small, projection fireplaces. Real heat and fake flames. It's also the first sight we've had of any untidiness.

Not untidy like the Tardis gets when everybody's in a bad mood, but untidy like a bad television set, just a few items out of place, and conspicuously out of place. I programmed these things not to transmit directly to me, but to remain with Daisy until I'm ready to extract them.

For instance, River's blue diary is sitting on the glass block of a coffee table. Daisy eats that one up like a good little girl. There's a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles on the fireplace. And, for the second time in one of these binary dreams, a tiny base metal replica of the huge bronze statue of me that stands in the main square in the capital city on Correl. Both of them go in Daisy and disappear into the memory bank for later.

"There's more, Liam, there has to be. Things she's hiding. I know you said you weren't very good at it, but think like a thief, if you would."

He turns and eyes the fireplace. There's a mirror above it, just a single, unframed panel, apparently set flush in the wall. Liam balls up one gloved hand in a fist and pulls it back.

"Just out of interest, do you _really_ need to worry about fingerprints?"

"I'm a thief. The gloves just happen. Can I get on with it, please?"

"Of course."

The fist hits home. And the mirror shatters, undoubtedly. Perfectly, and all around that place where his fist made contact. But none of the pieces fall. They hang around the impact, stretching away into the wall, as though frozen in time. Razor sharp on every single edge.

And there is something beyond them all, resting peaceful and protected in that cavity. It's the icy blue colour of steel, when steel isn't steel at all but an ancient alien wood. Round and gleaming and with a dark withered leaf curling from a dimple on the top.

"About Jessica," Liam says, before I can say it myself. "What did you draw out about Jessica?"

"Oh, you know, just general background. They brought her up, after all."

I'm lying and he knows it. Nonetheless, he makes one brave grab for it. The shards of mirror gather back around his fist, trying to reform their original pane. Liam's fist retracts, bleeding through the glove and the glove torn in a circle all around. I try using my poltergeist powers to separate the shards, but I can't hold them all, and it hurts to try. Somewhere in the real world, my hand is bleeding too.

"I'll come back for it," Liam says. Not sounding overenthusiastic about the idea, though.

In the real world, with the sting in my hand, the computer bleeps. Pond getting back to me, finally. It's only now that she's responding that I realize how long it's taken them and I wonder why? Did something happen? Is the cryptography room awkward to get to? I'm almost afraid to accept the message, but what choice do I have?

I open it. Have to.

And then I sigh out my relief.

"Liam, break another door. We're looking for two portions of the facility where the maps been changed and three sets of pass codes. The first thing you'll find is the secure link for the CCTV feed."


	5. Amypond

I knew something like this would happen. As soon as the Doctor's off the scene, the proverbial has to hit the proverbial, it's like a _law_ or something.

Then again, what's today for if not breaking the law.

I can't believe I'm doing this.

See, the location came through fine. Little bleep, little message box, that's alright. And the message said 'Cryptography Room'. Jessica reads that, over my shoulder. I wasn't really watching her at the time, but when I think back I imagine that she was beginning, very slowly to shake her head. Me, in blissful ignorance, I was back at the screen with the Stormcage schematic, searching out the cryptography room. Right down near the bottom, in the eighth circle. Isolated, central. Just below where the bottom of the main gallery is.

Didn't look too bad to me. Straight down the stairs and round the corner, right?

Except Jessica was shaking her head. "Not does it," she said. "Jessica not does it."

"No, no, what do you mean, not does it? You have to, Jessica, you said you would-"

"No, not _possible_ Jessica does it. Jessica not being able to be here and here," and she pointed to two different points on the plan, points on the east and west walls of the cryptography room. But there was nothing on the plan at those points, and the door was on the north wall, so I really didn't get what her problem was. "Am Stormmap, Amypond, not White Place map. White Place am having a two-lock on both wall sides."

"And they both have to be unlocked at the same time, is that what you're saying?"

"Am what it says."

"Can't you do one and then manipulate over to the other, do it really fast like-"

"Am not two Jessicas, Amypond."

"I'll go." Now, by this stage, arguing with her and getting used to the idea of her arguing back, I'd all but forgotten Rory was even in the room. And then he said that.

And me, not even really thinking, says very quick, "Don't be ridiculous, Rory, we're trying to think." But Jessica had stopped shaking her head. And the two of them looking at each other, practically looking _through_ me, as if deciding it all between themselves. "_No_," I said. "Stop that, Wonder Twins. Enough of that altogether now, please."

Rory laughed, "You sound like the Doctor talking to us."

"Yeah, well, maybe on occasion he's more right than we allow for."

"And yet do we ever do what he says, if we've made up our minds?"

"Rory, this isn't the same thing _at all_."

"No, _this_, Amy, as you keep reminding me, is for River. It's very different indeed."

All of this had the potential to go full-blown argument, if Jessica hadn't been trying to get past in between us. Hovering back as though she didn't want to interrupt but really, please, if she could just maybe squeeze in? I looked at her and she, with just her fingertips, moved my chair back an inch or two. With me in it. In this way, she was able to open the desk drawer my knees had been blocking.

And came out with a small, dark box. In it, another earpiece like the one she was wearing, and two eye-drives. Each of the eye-drives had a little spot in the corner which, as soon as she lifted them, I realized were cameras.

Feeding onto the last two screens.

I'm going to kill the Doctor someday, I may have already mentioned that. He was ready for this. He knew this was going to happen. And yet did he think to warn me? Did he let me get my argument out of the way sooner? Did he give me a chance to convince him? No. Coward.

As it was, with it all sitting there on the table and Rory already fitting the earpiece, what argument was I left with?

Only the Doctor would leave me in charge, and then take away any scrap control I might ever have had

"No!" I called out. One last go at putting a stop to this. The old 'Because it's madness' answer obviously wasn't going to do it. "There's only one manipulator between you. What if you get separated? In fact, you _have_ to get separated! No, it's too dangerous, we're not doing it."

And again, it was Jessica who thought she'd solve everything. And such a bloody child, stood there waiting until I asked her what she was looking at.

"Am having answer."

"Well, don't you bloody always!"

"Amy!" This from Rory, holding me back because I was very possibly losing it.

Jessica was shifting her feet, watching the floor. Pointed over her shoulder. "It gets. Comes back really quickfast." She went, running. And Rory put me down in my chair and stood there with his arms folded like he was my father or something, waiting for an explanation.

"Oh, no. No. If you're going to try and put this one on me I want answers first."

"Answers like _what_, Amy, what are you talking about?"  
>"Why are you doing this? Why did you just <em>jump<em> in like that?"

"Because of River."

"Really?"

He knew what I meant. As soon as I said I hated myself for it, but it's not as if he'd never given me any reason. Ever since he had that _thing_ in his head, since Detective Roman first touched Jessica's mask, he's been ridiculous. Protecting somebody he doesn't even know, and considering what I know to be coming, he's been _ridiculous_. Hasn't he? You can understand why I was worried. Can't you?

Rory didn't. Or not entirely. Enough not to say anything we would have regretted and not enough to say anything at all.

By the time Jessica got back I was glad of it.

She came back with transmatter disc strung on a chain, the kind she used to use all the time. Put that around her neck and then just whipped off the manipulator and put it on Rory. Problem solved, apparently. If they get split up, I can call Rory back in a half second and Jessica's still got an out.

"Where did you get that?"

"Stormplace beforetimes. Jessica Eighty-Four am takes it from Tall People for it."

Rory tried to hug me then. Which was awkward, because he didn't know what to do with his arm when it had a manipulator on it. Said to me quietly, "It doesn't matter where it came from."

And now they're gone.

They're a blue dot and a red dot on my map now, a pair of voices in my headset. Blue Dot can do what she pleases. I like Blue Dot better when she's a dot. But I miss Red Dot. I didn't tell Red Dot I was sorry and now he's on the same network as Blue Dot and I'm not having her listen to that.

I tell them if they take a left they can avoid a set of security codes that haven't come through from Reilly and the Doctor yet. It'll take them back onto the gallery, but I've got nothing from next door yet. I'm just trying to keep them moving until I can offer them _something._

Until I have something to offer.

Funny how often I find myself waiting for that.


	6. Chapter 6

Kovarian's clever.

I don't mean that to sound like I've just had some kind of revelation. I have never underestimated Madame Kovarian. It's just that she's really, _really_ clever. Even her _mind_ has security measures. Not the usual kind, like alarms and guards and other circumventable things, but the kind you're not allowed to have in the real world anymore.

For instance, the code to make the lift go below the seventh circle is on a plinth on a pillar on a foot-square island at the centre of a very deep, very dark pit lined along the bottom with broken glass. "You know, Doctor," Reilly says, entirely deadpan, "I think she knows we're here."

"No. Really?"

"You need to write me something in. But the more you write the closer she's going to get to waking up with me in here, so make it something I can use again."

The pillar is twice Liam's height and there isn't even space for him to stand at the base. I need to think about it. Meantime I tell him to look at the CCTV link again. It's a numerical code, tacked to the wall like a poster over the door. Too high up to read. That was one we were leaving until we could have a think about it.

You'll note, there's a lot of thinking going on. Because this is a lot more difficult than Rory made it look.

"Oh, no, Liam, I've got it, I've got it."

It takes some elaborate code work, even if I do say so myself, because there's no official word for what I'm sending him. It's essentially the springy middle part of a chest-buster with a handle on one end and a hook on the other. Liam has it in his hand before he knows it, before I even see it appear. It's just there. He stares at it for a moment, then looks up around the ceiling. That, it would seem, would be how he thinks of me.

Quite fun, being the voice of God.

"Think about it," God demands.

Divine inspiration strikes. "Oh. _Oh_, yeah, clever." Well, yes, quite, I thought so. "That's if it goes round and I don't fall to my _death_, but-"

"'Course it'll go round. Poltergeist, remember?"

Or God. Mixed metaphor, I know, but I'm happy to balance the two.

Liam braces himself, sighs. Moves back a few steps to get a run up. What I essentially gave him is a short length of strong bungee cord with a weighted end. He bolts forward and flings himself at Kovarian's broken-glass-moat-of-death, hook swinging. The bungee meets the pillar and the hook keeps travelling, right around, right back to him. And he fumbles, a natural slip, but there's some strange part of me that there. It's not that I can physically grab it, actually _bring_ it to him, but I'm there like _luck_. I want him to catch it on the second grab and he does.

The hook goes through the handle. All he has to do is walk on up the pillar and drag the bungee with him.

"Have _no_ idea when I'm going to use it again, but-"

"But it was effective and you saved the day," I fill in, on his behalf. "Thank you, Doctor."

"Of course. By the way," this as he is inching far too slowly up the pillar, "You've got the word 'plumber' mixed up with the word 'punk'."

"Have I? Wait, how do you-?"

"You were here. Gave me the hook back so I didn't fall. Thinking about me and you were still thinking the word 'plumber'. I get it now; you've got just got it mixed up with punk. You're thinking of piercings and tattoos, not mending pipes."

I didn't know it worked like that. Just be a bit more careful with what I'm thinking from now on. I bet River told him not to tell me it worked like that.

Anyway, he's at the top now so I'm not going to be bothered getting on at him for reading my mind.

"Right, Daisy, love, where are you?" Daisy bobs up by his shoulder and opens her mouth. The lift code, disguised as a set of car keys, goes into the orb. And while Liam's up there, he's in prime position to read the CCTV digits from the wall over the door. I have him write them down and feed them to Daisy. That way I don't have to worry about mistyping.

Because all of this has taken time, and I am aware of Pond. I am. I'm pretending I'm not because worrying over it won't exactly help me, but I am aware, painfully so, and this has all taken time.

She's foot-tapping, you know. I can't see or hear her, I'm not in the same room but Pond, as sure as the Tardis is blue, is foot-tapping. Very possibly contemplating my murder. Now she's got the lift and the CCTV feed she's probably feeling a little better, but there's still a lot she needs.

I don't have answers to give her.

It's strange and new and not a nice sensation.

And there's Liam, sitting on top of the pillar talking to Daisy like he hasn't a care in the world.

"Get down from there, we need those maps."

"Can't do that, Doctor."

"Don't be ridiculous, just wrap the bungee round again and slide down."

"Look at the floor, Doctor. By the fireplace." There's a shadow. As though someone short and probably a bit dumpier than she'd like was standing there. No person, just a shadow, and the shadow leans and stretches and scans around like a black searchlight. "That's what the fireplaces are for, it's how she moves. Your mate Rory was a detective in a city. Can go anywhere, fit in, be anything. Kovarian moves as a shadow in a white room, it's the same thing."

"That's why the fireplaces get larger-"

"-Every room we've been in, yeah. I told you she knew we were here."

Liam's theory is that the big mistake was having Jessica activate the program. That way, at the moment Kovarian lost consciousness, she knew there was something going on. She understood enough to place her attacker, and she was thinking of where that attacker could have been since they lost track of her i.e. with me and that put me in her head.

And she doesn't put _anything_ past me.

Quite right, too.

The shadow of Kovarian can only move where the fireplace throws her, so eventually she gives up, and Liam slides back down the pillar, pushes off it to jump back to safety.

"Right," I say, "Next door, quick as you like."

"Point to it."

"I'm sorry?"

"The next door." He has a point. Three white walls, and one red. Fireplace. Pit of Doom. And one door that we came through about ten minutes too long ago. "Doctor, don't take this the wrong way, but if you were trying to hide a doorway, where would you put it?"

First, without thinking, "Trapdoor." Then I begin to take it wrong way. Or what he's calling the wrong way, but honestly, how else can I take it? "I mean, there's probably not a trapdoor in this room, I'm not sure that's how Kovarian's mind would work, if I'm honest. I have a much more elaborate, inventive mentality than she does. Look at this place, because let's face it, she's a simple soul, so-"

So Liam kicks at a floor tile he's been studying, and it pops up. Magnetic latch, apparently, used to hold it flush, but now he's through.

That was a complete fluke. There was nothing in the room above to hide a door behind, so it had to be in either the floor, or the ceiling. It was fifty-fifty.

Ladders downward. Liam hangs on one arm, turned to study the opposite wall.

"Good news or bad news, Doctor?"

"Is the good news, by any chance, that there is no bad news?"

"No."

"Bad news then."

"She knows we need something physical to pass the information out."

"Good news?"

"I've got the maps."

They're written on the wall in a suspiciously dark red, hasty, hand-drawn lines. This is a new version of the maps, the last attempt of this brain to deceive and misinform.

And out in the real world, the computer bleeps. I accept Pond's message, and hear her voice in head. Terse, trying not to be angry with me, "Any chance on that Eighth Circle map?"

I send back, "Two minutes."

Two minutes is not long enough for Liam to write down everything that's on the wall. A moment later, Daisy disappears from over his head. He notices her sudden absence more than he sees her go. He tells me I have to stop writing things in, have to stop changing things. And he's right, he's absolutely right.

But I've _never_ been in a position where I couldn't even tell Pond what to do. Except for that time I was dying but… Well, asked to define 'extenuating circumstances', _being nearly dead_ would probably be the example I'd use.

"Liam, meet Daisy Mark 2. A Daisy with not only a mouth, but also eyes."

Well, one eye. Little red camera lens eye, off to one side, and her smiley face repainted to make it look like she's winking.

"Doctor, I think Daisy's flirting with me."

"You arrogant so-and-so, she's not even looking at you." She's looking at the wall, bobbing up and down to take it all in. It becomes clear before my eyes, another layer between me and reality, and I pack it off to Pond.

Another message comes back from her, almost immediately.

A thank you, I presume, and I open it.

It doesn't say thank you. It says, 'Nobody else can hear us this way, can they?'

'No.'

'You knew Rory would have to go in there with her.'

'No question mark, Pond?"

'No.'

I don't know what she's saying. She's saying something, but I don't know what it is. I do, however, have a feeling that what I say next is going to be absolutely crucial. I'm thinking about it, composing it.

But Liam says, in a tone that means I have to pay attention, "Oh, God, Gen… Doctor, I wish you'd stop changing things…" With his free hand he takes hold of Daisy and turns her camera eye downward. At the bottom, where the ladder chute empties out, the room below is all lit up in orange, flickering. There is a _monster_ of a fireplace down there. "That was _not_ like that when I climbed in here."


	7. Amelia

He doesn't answer me. He's a simple guy, needs all the signals. Maybe should have just let him have the question mark.

He sends over the Eighth Circle maps, though. Maybe that's the response. 'Not now, Pond, get with the program'. He's got a point, I suppose, not that I'm admitting that, not if he asks. Because it's getting to that irritating point now where the blue dot and the red dot are going to have to split up.

"Amypond watches Rory. Am knowing where to go."

I know she says that as a kindness. I know she means it to help and comfort me. That's Jessica's little girl way of letting me know she understands. I know all that. But I can't stop the thought that goes through my head, the instant reaction, 'Yeah, good for you.' I don't say that out loud.

Just about.

The little camera in her eye-drive is looking straight ahead, down the hall she'll need to follow. She's wary, edging, casting about for any more of those Tall People she goes on about. But she keeps, at all times, Rory at the edges of her vision. She's defending him. Hasn't said anything, hasn't made herself obvious, but that's what she's doing, like she thinks I'm _stupid_. Like I'm not up to it and she is.

And Rory, for his part, isn't looking around at all, but at her. Doing the same thing.

Him and her against the world. Sweet, really, when you think about it. And now that it's time to split up, he doesn't want to leave her. And he _does_ make himself obvious, I'll tell you that much for nothing. It's like I'm not even here.

"Rory, past her, on the left, there's a service door."

"Just a second, Amy-"

"This isn't a holiday, you know."

"Just a second."

Jessica's camera stops scanning the corridor. Her gaze is drawn, fast and shocked, to her shoulder. Rory just put a hand on her shoulder. And, and really listen out for this one, folks, because this is the kicker, _he_ asks _her_, "Are you sure about this?"

"Rory, on the cameras. They're heading straight for you, the two of you have to go, _now_."

But he's still waiting for his answer. Like he knows I can't really see anything coming, or worse, like he doesn't even care. Jessica, for her part, reaches out and opens the door for him. Doesn't say a word. Which is probably for the best because I can't think of anything she could say that wouldn't make me scream.

It's not her. I know in my heart it's not her. It's just the stress, it's just Rory being there and River being at stake. Nothing to do with Jessica. Or, at least, not in any way other than everything seems to come down to her.

The Doctor says this all started when he took my scone on holiday that time. It didn't. It started when that girl set foot on the Tardis, far as I can see.

That sounds like I blame her, doesn't it? I don't. No, I really don't, seriously. That's not it. It's that when you can travel in time, then the old hypothetical about what you would do differently in your life isn't necessarily hypothetical anymore, is it? Why does everybody else seem to be afraid to even think that?

But they are. So here I am.

"Left, Rory. Slow, too, there's a Silent on the next hall. You're alright so long as it doesn't hear you." That means he won't talk to me, doesn't it? He gives a thumbs-up to the nearest security camera rather than even acknowledge me. "Okay, hold back here a second, tuck in. Let it pass." He stands perfectly still, waiting for the sentry to move on. Just burning to ask me how Jessica's doing. "The Doctor's getting back to me about the passkeys for the room. Doesn't think they'll be psychic though, so no petrichor problem. Simple stuff, probably. See, the security _inside_ here isn't that heavy. Once you're inside they presume you're meant to be there. I'm not getting any red flags on you at all, so far. Okay, you're clear. Out there and down to the right."

On the camera, I see him open his mouth to speak.

"Still be quiet, though. That's not the only Silent about."

Oh, I'm not abusing my newfound authority at all. I don't enjoy this, you know, not one bit.

Not one, little bit.

I take my eye off the red dot for a second, cast it over to the blue dot. It's not moving. Jessica's camera feed doesn't show anything, and there's nothing around her on the CCTV. I sigh, "Earth to Blue Dot? What's the problem, Jessica?"

She starts moving again.

"Nothing, Amypond. Am closetimes being there. Where am Rory and am Doctor talking keys to her yet?"

Who's running this heist, me or her? Salt in the wound, it's Rory himself that answers to tell her he's nearly in place. I could have done that. Even worse, right at that moment there's a ding in my other ear. A message from next door.

'Another two minutes on the passkeys.'

To Rory and Jessica I translate, "Doctor's having trouble on his end. Short delay. Possibly not so short."

"No."

This, from, _guess who_, Jessica. She's reached the keypad, standing looking into it.

"Not delay. Amypond am to be telling him not wastes time."

Rory and I, in perfect unison, "What are you talking about?"

"Am being close to Tall Person? Am Rory being?"

"Stop asking questions and explain," I tell her. You have to get sharp with creatures like her. She was raised with orders and discipline; this is what she understands.

"Am not lockpad. Am being scanner for eyes. Tall People here not guards, being keys."

My turn now. "No. No. You're not wandering up to a pair of Silents and-"

"Amy," Rory says. "Tell the Doctor he won't find anything. Jessica, what do I have to do?"

She tells him, in broken English, about a Silent's limited vision, how it short-circuits their electrical abilities if you hold the two prongs of the hand together, about sneaking up behind and pulling back the head, even about the best way to knock it out against the wall when he's done with the eye-scanner and all this time I'm sitting here, asking myself, _What the hell just happened_?

And somewhere in between I've done as I was told and sent that message to the Doctor.

I can't quite describe to you how surreal it is to watch the two of them go about it. It's cool and calm and quite cleanly done. Which is fine, for Jessica. You expect it of her, don't you? She used to knock things out professionally. And permanently. But Rory copes really, really well, considering he has no experience and radio-crackle instructions. And they count each other in when it comes to the unlocking. And when it's done, you can hear Rory, not quite laughing but all the tension and adrenaline working out of him.

Jessica's eye-camera picks up her reflection in the scanner. He laughs and then, afterward, hearing that, she smiles.

"Main door on the north wall, guys."

"Amy, what's the matter?" I hesitate, say nothing. But by the time Rory meets Jessica at the main door, he's figured out what's going on. He tells her to hold on a second, reaches in and picks out her earpiece. "Between you and me, Amy, what's the matter?"

"You really _decimated_ that Silent."

Very simply, he says, "River could be on the other side of this door."

Good answer.

He gives Jessica back her earpiece and that's the end of the private conversation, I suppose. And now I feel petty, and wrong, and bad. Not for long, though. I'm just getting into it when Jessica looks up at Rory. Waiting for him. She's grown her stakes out down to her knees, ready to protect and serve, but he's still going first. Bloody typical.

I can't even give him any warning. There are no cameras in the cryptography room.

So Rory steps up all alone and without any help from me, and pushes the door open.

A white room beyond. Circular table coming up out of the floor at the centre. Maybe not a table, on closer inspection, some kind of circuit board. Wired into a little black brick, like a memory stick, but with a red number readout down the front.

"What the hell is this?" I catch myself saying, "Where's River?"

"Am being otherplace now. This am Keeperkey. Gets back for Doctor."

Before I quite know what I'm typing, I've sent the Doctor a message I'll probably regret when I'm in a better mood. Right now, though, I mean every word, and that's what matters.

For the first time since this started, he gets back to me right away. 'What's the matter, Pond?'

What's the matter is that I'm watching Rory just stand there while Jessica swaps the 'Keeperkey', whatever the hell that's even supposed to be, with a fake version.

'This was never about River.'

'The question mark is on the right-hand side of the keyboard.'

I'm about to tell him exactly what I think of that, balancing in my head the strength of my feeling now with how likely I am to stay this angry (answer: likely). But in my other ear there's a whistle and a thunk and Rory groans. Jessica whips around to give me the full picture with her eye-drive.

There's a dart in Rory's neck. Long and silver and somebody still holding the end. His eyes flutter and he falters and finally he falls.

The person standing behind him, still holding the dart as he drops down off it, looks a hell of a lot like my daughter. Not as I normally know her, but as she cropped up at the Tian Lu Quan. Being a good little Kovarian project.

"Melody Alison Pond!" I cry, scandalized, "You pick your father up off that floor and give him an antidote this _instant_, young lady."

But nothing happens. She can't hear me, after all. It's like I'm not even here.

River, or whatever, she walks up to the circuit table, picks up the fake infokey and throws it down next to Rory, and Jessica. Jessica knelt to his side, checked the puncture mark and his pulse. And then, which is more and which she thinks I don't see, she snatches the transmatter disc from around his neck and hides it away in her pocket. All this without time to think it through, acting on instinct. Her first instinct is to take that disc, to give herself the exit plan. To take it away from Rory. Only then does she stand to face River.

Oh, and Jessica? That same Jessica? Good old Defender Jessica? Yeah, she's just backed off now. Watching or biding her time, or something, but definitely not doing anything useful. What else is new… When River steps up to her, and smiles, she slips back another half a step and that's all.

River holds out her hand, "Give it back now, Little Ghost."

Sullenly, defiantly, "Am not Little Ghost. Am Jessica now." And yet, _and yet_, for all the talk, she's putting the infokey back in River's hand.

All I can do is look on, and I have nothing to say, and what was the point of all this?

"Ah, but you're going to be the Little Ghost again, aren't you? The curse of the Twohearts." She crosses her hands over her collar bone, double tap. Old Jessica sign-language for Gallifreyan. River's smile splits over her teeth, turns mean. "I'm going to make sure of it."

Strange, that.

Coming from River, I mean, it would be strange. But when we left River at the Tian Lu Quan, Soul said it was hitching a lift back here with her. That's very possible. And the Doctor did tell me that horrible fairytale about Soul's engineering his death in the relative-near-future. His and River's, actually, if I recall.

No time to think about it, though, because that that moment Jessica, brave, strong, protective, never-to-have-been-letting-them-down Jessica, she _bolts_. Splits, takes off, abandons ship, there are quite a number of ways I could phrase this but the main thrust of it is, she's running and I'm going to wring her neck.

"Amypond," she gasps, when the blue dot is far, far from the unconscious, defenceless red dot, "Amypond. Not worries. Trusts her. Brings back Roryperson and Keeperkey neartimes."

Amypond says nothing. Amypond has seen enough. Trust her? No. Amypond am to be thinking that's maybe not the best idea right now. Sorry. And I'm not going to sit here anymore just watching and giving directions. There's nobody else today. Nobody to depend on except for myself. If anybody's going to get Rory out of there, it's going to have to be me.

Useless me with nothing to offer. It's going to have to be me.


	8. Chapter 8

"We're finished, aren't we?" Liam is saying. "They have everything. Only, I'm not really that comfortable with hanging around here any longer."

He has a point.

Originally the room at the bottom of the ladder was a lounge-sized box, same as the rest. Darker down here, lit only by the fireplace, but the fireplaces were getting large by this stage so it was doing the job. Those few dark places Liam could still hide in left him circling the walls, and there was nothing to find. We were looking for those passkeys. And it was important. That was the last stage. Beyond that Rory and Jessica would be on their own, with or without me

That was why it didn't cost me a thought to reach in and extend the room. Trying to offer more of a search area, redefining the limits, searching less specifically so that Kovarian's mind wouldn't know what to hide.

Of course, I missed the obvious point.

She's security conscious. I just thought I'd state that, in case you hadn't gathered from the secret trapdoors and last minute re-depositing of information and the shadow-Kovarians leering out of the fires.

When her mind didn't know what to hide, it hid everything.

My initial little tweak, an extra six feet square or so, was taken out of my control. The room shot back into the dark and a table sprang up. Clear Perspex underneath a white tablecloth, and as long as the room itself. Periodically along it, dishes of food, spaced out and all alone, like fragments of a feast that hadn't quite downloaded properly.

"Oh, my God, that's weird," was Liam's instant reaction. "That should not be in her head."

"Why not?"

"I… I just never think of her as a thing that _eats_, y'know? Feeds, maybe. Sucking some kind of vital… not blood, but… like, _spinal fluid_ or something."

I dismissed it and made fun of him simply in order to forget that image. It just _worked_ and because of that it stuck with me and it still won't go away. I am very deliberately not thinking of a fast-food straw stuck in between vertebrae, I am thinking of _anything_ else.

Actually, I'm mostly thinking of Liam.

The table was trapped. There was nothing for him to do but try everything that wasn't nailed down, just the way I told him. Only by touch would he be able to tell what was a simple illusion and what was a secret waiting to be passed out to me.

Here's the thing; nothing was a simple illusion.

Any time Liam touched anything that we hadn't written in ourselves, the fireplace expanded. The fireplace expanded and the flickering light reached further. The light reached further and brought the sweeping, grasping shadow of Kovarian with it. Every step he got away, she was fluttering in black and orange at his heels. Halfway up the table he pulled out a chair and sat down. Put his head down on his arms and sighed, "We need to think about this."

"No," I told him, "No we don't." When he turned his head I saw farther up the table. The fireplace was large enough by this stage to glow faintly even in the farthest recesses. There at the end, the last dish, the one we were never supposed to reach, was a silver charger piled high with glossy red apples. "Just don't touch another thing until you get there."

"Predictable heads," he was muttering. And me, not really listening, too busy being proud of myself. "Swear to God, if anybody ever gets into my brain and it tempts them with shiny apples, I'll blow the bloody thing out."

Tempts.

That's the word I should have paid more attention to.

Instead we walked right into it, he and I. Went to the shiny red apples at the very far end of the room. Picked them up.

And the flames roared up to meet us, and that's how it came to happen that Liam is standing with his back to the wall and the shadow of Kovarian sniffing and shuddering not inches from him.

"But we're finished, aren't we? Doctor?"

This is about where we came in.

Either way, the Ponds and Jessica are on their own.

No. No, we're not quite finished.

"Liam, she can't hurt you when you're a figment of her imagination, so don't be afraid."

"She can bring the whole thing down on top of me and leave me a braindead vegetable. I'm not sure if that would _hurt_, exactly, but it probably wouldn't be pleasant. What are you typing?"

"That won't happen, I won't let it."

"What are you _typing_, I can hear you _typing_. You can't write anymore in, she's right here, what are you-?"

"Trust me, I'm the Doctor."

"'Shut up and do it,'" he mutters back. And I get the distinct feeling he's quoting somebody, "'I'm the General.'"

Too late to ask him what he means, though. The flicker and the shadow reach his feet, and she has him. But she's not just a shadow anymore, she has to materialize, has to stop hiding, because I wrote it that way. I can be clever too, you know, don't know if I've pointed that out before.

She's perhaps a mite taller when she's in her own mind. Maybe just a half-inch narrower about the middle too. But the rest doesn't change, not a bit of it. And even in this Silent-free zone, our ever-cautious Kovarian still winks out from behind her eye-drive.

She's stronger here too, even without the usual entourage. She has Liam by the spikes of his hair and draws him down to her level.

"Alright, Mrs K?" he says, through gritted teeth. "How's the war going?"

A momentary flicker of doubt, "Where have I seen you before?"

"In your dreams, love, every night you go to bed alone."

Oh, but she fumes, with just about every little telltale bar the cartoon steam that could be coming out of her ears. Have I mentioned before that Liam can stay? We like Liam, Liam can hang around a bit.

It's when she's glaring at him with her one uncovered eye that he sees what I was getting at, why I'm putting him through this.

"Oh right," he says. "Anything that's not nailed down."

"Yes," I tell him. "Rather elegant solution, really. It is both the last piece of the puzzle you're fetching back to me and the trigger to start her waking up, so-"

He's not listening. He is, I believe, enjoying the fact that neither one nor two but three of his fingernails can take a little gouge from her forehead as he snatches off her eye-drive.

She stands stunned, sways back into one of the Perspex dining chairs. It's hit her now, and exhausts her. Watching her slip away, back to her real world, Liam pulls Daisy down out of the air and dumps the little black patch inside.

"What about me, Doctor, what's my out?"

"Same as last time, Liam. Pucker up."

He casts an uneasy glance at Kovarian. Finally decides, "Nah. Sorry, Doctor, rather die. I'll just sit here, if it's all the same to you."

"Not _her_. Prettier than her. More human and all."

He turns to the bobbing, faithful old girl at his shoulder with her one fluttering red eye and relaxes entirely. Takes her between both hands and brings her to his lips, pausing only to look once more at Kovarian, "I'm sorry, Mrs K. But her and me are made for each other and you're just… You're just bloody awful."

He kisses Daisy and Daisy, being new to this and understandably overzealous, swallows him whole.

The first I know of being back in the real world is Liam in the next chair, "Wahey, Daisy, first date! What _would_ your mother say, love?"

The-real-world-again is a strange feeling. Until this moment I hadn't been aware of being away from it. But we've got colours and lights and all sorts here. Couldn't be more different if I programmed it to be. And I can't program anything anymore. That's unfortunate.

And all of a sudden I can see just how and why River might go a bit megalomaniac, given a dreamspace and a code-writer. It's easier, isn't it? When you don't have what you need you can just create it. It's a world where you never have to risk anything, because you just write the risk out of existence. All of a sudden I feel terrible; this might have been the more challenging, psychically speaking _and_ in terms of intelligence, but we had the easier job here today. We really did.

Still waking up, still getting used to being more than a disembodied presence again, I send a message to Pond; 'How are you?'

The reply follows quickly.

'Yeah, fine. Talk soon.'

Annoyed at me, but that's to be expected, seeing as we both exist. And it's only going to get worse if I charge in there shaky and nervous and acting as though I could have done it better.

See that? That just above, there? That's called empathy and contrary to popular belief, I'm rather good at it,

I reply, 'We're out now, but there are things to look into. Shout if you need me.'

'I'm great, Doctor. Really.'


	9. Mrs Williams

I'm great. Better than ever, in fact.

I mean, sure, I've just watched in perfect, Dogme-95 first person as they picked up my husband and carried him upstairs again, back all that way that we'd come together and farther. Back to the second circle, and the medical sector where they'd laid out the unconscious Kovarian. And sure, now he's in the same room as her and she's awake and he's not.

Yeah, all of that.

But I'm just fine, Doctor, thanks. You stay next door and play with your shiny new information. I don't need you. I'm great, thanks.

And I actually do get a lot better when I see the state of Kovarian. She's flour-white, trembling slightly. It's making her cruel, too, or more so than usual. You can see it all over her, an extra tremor in the usual snarl, a flash in the eyes.

But she can bring it on. I might be a billion lightyears away on the far end of an earpiece and camera, but I'm ready for her this time. Time she learned she can't just take what she pleases and not pay for it.

That's called stealing.

Kovarian readies herself before she gets up from her pallet. Doesn't know I'm watching her yet, or she'd never let this show, all this fear and the nerves and the fact that she knows the Doctor and Liam Reilly have just cleared her head out for all she was worth. I should probably get this burned to a disc when it's over. You know, for rainy days.

She walks over and lightly, almost gently, tries to slap Rory awake. That's fine. Really. That's okay. When I get him back with marks on him, that's when we'll run into problems. For now, it's fine. "Mr Williams… _Mr Willi… _For God's sake, _what_ did you give him?"

"Just the usual," River shrugs. "Promise. Daddy never has been an ox when it comes to chemicals."

"Wait," Kovarian says. Leaning down close to the camera. To Rory's face, but that's fine, for now. For now, we'll just say camera. "So who's watching, then?" That's when she finds the earpiece. That's when I take a deep breath and sit straighter. She can bring it on, I'm waiting.

"Doctor?" she begins. Trying to fix her voice, too, and I can hear it, trying to level out and stop shaking. That makes me strong.

"No."

"_Mrs Williams_…" She's smiling now. She likes that. Silly pushover Mrs Williams, she's thinking, well, what _haven't_ we taken from her in the past? She's thinking that this is the one ray of sunshine in an otherwise pretty dark day and she has never been more wrong.

"Yeah, sorry I couldn't make it in person."

"And you sent your husband with your apologies, of course." She rips off Rory's eye drive and flips it over to show him to me. Out cold and the puncture mark on his neck suspiciously dark, swollen up hard. "I never got them."

"Then return him to sender, if you wouldn't mind."

My hands have still been at the keyboard, but my fingers shake and they keep hitting keys, so I bring them back and sit with them pressed between my knees. Keep them out of trouble.

"Might hold onto him, actually. At least until you tell me what the hell the Doctor thinks he's playing at, sending cheap thieves into _my_ mind."

"Firstly, 'thief', singular. Secondly, he wasn't cheap, he was free, he did it gladly. Thirdly, I think he just went in for the background knowledge."

"Oh," she grins, "he's a _wonderful_ fool, isn't he, Amelia? _Background_ knowledge… I never heard the like. No patience…" She's pacing now, about the medical rooms. Probably just walking off that groggy, hungover feeling of having your mind raided. But she takes the eye-drive with her, and I hear the clack of her heels. Hear a single little snort of laughter before, "As though _I_ were special. He could hop forward to anywhere and hear _all about_ the General."

All of a sudden, I realize that I have nothing to barter with. Nothing she wants to trade for. The whole point of this, the reason we're here to begin with, is that Kovarian is the one with all the answers. I panic. Cover the microphone so she won't hear a very brief spell of hyperventilation and one soft quiet cry to myself.

Then I bite my lip so the Doctor won't hear it either. What would he say if he could see me now, sat here bargaining with the enemy, winging it all the way? Certainly not 'That's my girl', or 'You learned from the best'. He'd call me names and throw me out of this chair and take over and do it properly.

That's why I'm great, remember? I'm fine.

I don't need him here, spinning it out in layers upon layers of lies and-

Oh.

This is how it happens for him, then. You rant about the thing that bugs you most, and suddenly it becomes relevant. There in the dark, inspiration strikes. Oh, that's how it works.

"Yeah, well," I tell Kovarian, and I do my best to sound off-hand and like I'm laughing, "you're just the best source, aren't you? Get all the facts rounded up together. He just didn't plan it all that well. Didn't give himself time. It had to be today, so-"

"Why?"

Gotcha.

"Oh? God, I thought they would have told you first thing. Yeah, Jessica escaped. That's what Rory's there for, he was trying to bring her back. He, the Doctor I mean, he's a bit worried you might not exist tomorrow."

And so, now, is Kovarian. She turns to River, demanding to know why she wasn't told that the creature was here. And I do, I almost correct her. I almost say 'girl', over the word 'creature'.

First time I met Jessica, the Doctor was still calling her a thing. I was the one saying no, it was definitely a female.

It was different, back then. I didn't know what that girl really was, not until Stormcage. I still have that prisoner file. Under the mattress. I still think of it sometimes. Treason and espionage and that long, long list of murders in the first degree.

Before Kovarian can say anymore to me, before I can think any harder about what I'm doing, I continue. "She's wearing one of these eye-drives, Madame Kovarian. Jessica, I mean. The kind like you have in your hand, with the little camera. And to be honest, there isn't much else in the world that would do me as much good and getting the popcorn in, kicking back in this chair and watching you squirm. And then, when I get bored, I'll flick over the channel and there'll be this really creepy horror movie on, where you follow this mental little killer stalking her victim in the dark. The only thing is, I think I can guess how it ends."

"Oh, _please_, Mrs Williams. Do you really think we won't find her before then?"

"Yeah, I really do. Because she knows that place. Childhood home, if you think about it. And also I have the cameras and I'm in her ear. As far as staying hidden goes, Jessica's covered."

Silence falls. I let it.

River cuts in. "This is ridiculous. Unfounded demands about a creature we can have well in hand. Give me ten minutes, Madame Kovarian, and I'll haul the little scrag-end here by the hair."

Kovarian raises a hand to her. Looking thoughtful, which makes me nervous, but I put my fingernails in the arm of the chair and squeeze it out. "What exactly is it that you want, Mrs Williams?"

"River and Rory."

"No. Don't be greedy. You're only giving me one; why should I give you two?"

"And _why_," River cuts in again, "would I be going anywhere?"

I was being strong, wasn't I? Yeah, that's right, that was the plan. Big girls don't cry, Pond, get it together.

"But your husband… Well, fine. I have no use for him. I suppose we could cut a deal there."

I bite back, on instinct because I don't have much else left, "No. It's both of them or nothing."

"Then I'll keep him."

"…No."

Kovarian smiles. She wasn't supposed to smile. When I went over this in my head that wasn't how it ended. And then she starts to give instructions, and those never appeared in the run-through either. "I'm going to give the earpiece to River. You'll guide her and two human guards to a safe apprehension of the girl, at which point, I will return your husband to you via his rather nicely modified vortex manipulator. Understood?"

That was supposed to be my line. 'Understood?' That was a thing I was supposed to say to her. And it was going to feel so good to hear her stammer back her answer. I know exactly how great that would have felt, and so much so that I almost envy her when she gets to hear me do it instead.

My shaking hands hover over the keyboard. Before I quite know it I've typed a message. Only to go to the room next door. I could just scream and have the same effect and probably feel better for it.

It reads: _I've made a mess. Please help_.

I stretch out my ring finger and hold down backspace until it's gone. It's too late for that. What's the point? What difference is he going to make? What choice do I have now but to go through with this?

Then, for the first in a long time, the Blue Dot moves. Not very far, just creeping out of a dark hiding place, somewhere on the Ninth Circle, into a spot where there's enough light for her camera. She looks up into the CCTV. Directly at me. Nods and says out loud for Kovarian to hear, "It understands."

River laughs. Or whatever sick Silent imitation of River this is, she laughs, "Well, if nothing else, you made her loyal."

She's addressing Kovarian but I tell her back, "Yeah, but who to?" That's not a strength in what they did to Jessica. They just made her terrified. She could be loyal to anybody who showed her a scrap of respect. The highest bidder, if they bid in mint humbugs and jelly babies. I gave her strawberry laces at Christmas. But before I can think about that, Kovarian hands the earpiece to River. Smiles at me on Rory's eye-drive camera the whole time.

I direct them to the ninth circle. River, two Silents, two human guards. The last four in full body armour to guard against the ash stakes, but Jessica has actually broken them off since I saw her last, and stands still, like a soldier at ease with her hands lightly clasped behind her back, just waiting.

Why is she doing that?

I don't actually have a map of the Ninth, so it takes them a while to find her. Long enough for me to remember that Jessica has the transmatter disc. Not that that counts, not that that makes any difference, but what if it does? What if they search her and they find that and they think it's all part of the plan? It's her only out, her only chance of escape and I know that, but what if they don't send back Rory?

All that time, until they reach her, I have no idea whatsoever what I'm going to do.

They get there. They have her surrounded. And they don't trust the fact that she's just waiting for them, just standing still. "Anything we should know?" River asks me, before anything approaches her.

"No," I say. Then, "Yeah."

I tell them about the disc.

And this time Jessica's head whips round, and _this_ time she looks at me on the camera like I've done something truly vile. "_Amypond_…"


	10. Amelia Jessica Pond

But the next second they have her. And River is laughing something down the earpiece.

And the second after that, Rory rematerializes on the floor behind me.

Kovarian looks into the eye-drive one last time and says, quite calmly, "Goodbye, Mrs Williams."

And the second after that the Doctor walks in.

Bursts in, in fact. All light and bubbles because we were arguing before. Doesn't seem like such a big deal anymore. "Heard a manipulator, assumed it was all over and went swimmingly and so on and there's a nearly-dead Rory all on his own. Pond?" He deflated as he went on there. He's kneeling now, scanning Rory with the sonic. Declares that he'll live, which is something.

I'm not doing much. I'm staring. Holding the edge of the chair like I might fall off it if I let go, and I'm not testing that theory. I'm holding on.

Liam Reilly is holding on. He's hanging on the doorframe behind the Doctor. He's staring too. At me. Not that he knows. If he knew, the Doctor would know. But he's looking at me like he knows.

The Doctor sends him to fetch some kind of antidote from the console room, so that gives us a good half-hour of privacy, probably. And when he's gone he's not staring at me anymore.

Then the Doctor eases over to me. Takes one of my hands and prises it from the chair, lets it grip his instead.

"Amy, what happened?"

"…It all…. It all just went wrong."

"But wh-"

"I'm not like you, Doctor, I don't always know what to do, I don't have the right idea at the right time, I only think I do, I only pretend I do and then it all just went wrong and I couldn't do anything about it anymore and-"

"Why didn't you call for me? Why didn't you call it off?"

"I _tried_, I tried, but it was… it was too late by then, it all happened really quickly. Doctor, I didn't get River. I didn't get anything."

He's stroking my hand, leans on the arm of the chair and pulls my head in against him. It's almost nice, for a moment and then he says, "Don't worry about River."

I get up so fast the seat topples under him. He nearly falls, recovers just enough to find himself eye to burning eye with me and my hand on his chest, ready to just shove him over and be done with it, just this once, but I don't. "Don't worry about _River_?"

Smiles like he knows something I don't. "River's a capable girl."

"What are you talking about?"

He swings an arm around me and drags me with him to the computer. Opens a file from next door titled 'eyepatch' and translates live out of the binary. "Word direct from the horse's purse-string little mouth is that Madame Kovarian suspects absolutely nothing. And trust me, if there were anything there to suspect, she would suspect it."

"You're telling me River's evil? How is that good news?"

"No, Pond, I'm telling you she's doing a wonderful job of covering up and _why_, why did you say that, now I'm thinking about that. I wasn't thinking about that before…"

I can forgive him for that. He didn't see the way she was in there. I did and I don't know what I believe right now.

And then he says it. "What about Jessica?"  
>Since when was any of this ever supposed to be about Jessica? I think it's because I'm still so angry with him that I don't tell him the truth. That, and because I know exactly what to say<p>

"They got cornered, her and Rory. Right at the end. The Silence got him in the neck and she used the manipulator to pack him out of there. They pulled her off before he fazed out, so she didn't make it."

That was far easier than it should have been. That was impossibly, disturbingly easy. I don't even feel sick. I don't even want to cry anymore.

The Doctor is looking over the CCTV feeds for her. Can't find her, which must mean she's in some side-room somewhere. Some cell with no windows, not even the kind that only look in. Still looking for her, he notices the cryptography room.

Says, "I see they managed to swap the infokeys, then."

"No. River came in, she made Jessica hand it back."

Then he sits down in my seat, rolling his head back, laughing right out loud. "Oh, clever girl… Clever, clever girl."

"What?" I lean in to look over his shoulder. The room looks as dull and empty as it did before they walked in there. All I can see is the place where Rory was lying and I didn't know if he was dead or alive.

"The circuit table isn't lit up. Incomplete. She gave River back the fake. What happened to it, Amy, do you remember?"

"She… She threw it down. Next to…"

We both turn, slowly, at Rory on the floor. A little lump about the right size in his front jeans pocket.

That's what Jessica told me, isn't it? 'Sends back Roryperson and Keeperkey'.

"Better find a toaster that still works, Pond. Jessica's still got a spare disc since the last time she was at Stormcage; she'll be back with us within the hour."

Yeah, Doctor, of course. Clever girl, is Jessica.

Time passes. Reilly comes back with the antidote. Rory wakes up, sick but no lasting damage. Close to a perfect score, this little heist of ours. The infokey retrieved, River known to at least be in no immediate danger. Once Jessica comes back, it's practically the glossy big ending we all came into this thinking of. A bit staggered, maybe, a bit drawn out, but close to perfect, nonetheless.

I almost convince myself she's coming.

After a couple of hours, they've run out of war stories. Taunting Kovarian and knocking out Silents make for good tales, but they only take so long to tell. When the pacing and the foot-tapping are driving me insane and the toast is stone cold, I look up across the quiet at Liam Reilly.

"Hey," I say. He looks up. Looks directly at me and at nobody else and I look right back. "You're from out of our future, right? River sent you. That's what you said when you walked in. That Doctor Song had sent you."

"And so she did."

"So you've been there."

"Yeah."

"So you know."

"Yeah." Of course he knows, he's been there. He knew before he came back here how this was going to end.

The Doctor and Rory looking across the space between us at right angles, shrugging at each other. Because Reilly and I both know where this is going and they don't.

"So what can you tell me? And I swear, pal, you so much as think the word 'Spoilers' at me and I will personally pack you off to Stormcage myself."

"Hm," he begins, theatrical, pretending to mull it over. "What can I tell you, then? Let's see, let's see… I can tell you that Jessica survives."

"I don't give a damn about Jessica-" Rory tries to interrupt. I hold up a hand to stop him. "What can you tell me about my daughter?"

Reilly doesn't miss a beat.

"I can tell you you'll wish you'd given a damn."

Because snap decisions have gotten me absolutely nowhere today, and because every hopeless streak has to end, I hold a hand out to Rory. "The manipulator. Quickly, I need it."

He starts with all that calm-down-and-wait-a-second, so I get up and take it off him. Set it to redial the last co-ordinates it came from. River showed me how to do that. I press the button to go.

And nothing happens.

"They've blocked it, Mrs Williams," Reilly says, "They've had two hours to block it. That won't work again."

The Doctor reaches out, sets one hand that would usually be so, so comforting, on my arm, and the other gently takes away the manipulator. "River will take care of her," he says. Then hands me off to Rory for all the hugging and the parts he just generally doesn't like to deal with.

I take that because I'm happy with it. Because it means my face is in Rory's shoulder when Liam Reilly stands up, fast, gathers his belongings off the console and charges down to the door. The Doctor follows. I hear them without looking.

"Wait, where are you going?"

"Back to my own time. I can't stay here with-" With me. He means he can't stay here with me. There's enough of a pause that I know he's looking over at me. And I know, when he speaks again, at the Doctor's gaze must have started to follow his. "It's not on the itinerary."

"_What_ itinerary?"

"You're a busy man at the minute, Doctor. And it's not going to ease up for a while yet. I can tell you that much. But once I've said that I'm supposed to go." He's not taking no for an answer and I can't make myself argue with him. He's got the door open already. He must wave, because I feel Rory tip his head to him over my shoulder. "Mr Williams, I'll see you and your wife on the other side, come the time. Oh, Doctor, that's the other thing."

And these, these he makes his last words before he goes.

"Doctor Song says the time is on its way."

Come the hour.

Come the time.

Defining moment piling up upon defining moment. And I realize it's not just me, but all of us. When all these times keep coming, we have to start seeing the warnings and stop messing up. I understand now why the Doctor's been doing some of the things he's doing. Desperately trying to change the course, and only ever managing to cement it. He has to stop that. We all do. Have to stop messing up.

Because the moments are getting bigger.

[A/N – Intrigue and Silence and repercussions, oh my. We're on the home stretch now, I guess. It's all a bit no-return now, no exchange or refund, so I'm not asking for reviews or whether I should go on, and I'm not apologizing for anything, because the end is getting damn nigh. If you're with me, you're with me and I'll see you on the other side.

Thanks a hell of a lot though, if you're with me. And I promise, the next one will be funny again. It features a gamma-ray-charged Justice Agent who just can't stay still. Quite literally. If I can't get a laugh out of that I'm not even trying. Back soon, folks.

Hearts.

Sal.]


	11. Minute Preview

I've dropped the Ponds off. Observation point at the aurora fields of Tura. Nice, relaxing break while Rory recuperates from yet another poisoning and Amelia… I worry about Amelia. I know she's always put on something of a front as regards Jessica, but she would never have meant her any harm. I've told her and told her it wasn't her fault and she says _nothing_. Still, she is now in Mr Pond's capable hands, and he is undoubtedly the best man for the task.

Note: I do not use the phrase 'fobbed her off'. He's just _better_ at it than me.

Note: Neither do I use the phrase 'fobbed _them_ off'. It's just that they needed a break at the same time as by absolute coincidence I happen to have had a bit of work to do.

_I know_. Proper actual _work_-type work that means something and has importance and, I suppose, technically, if you want to look at this way, might count as _preparation_. I'm _preparing_ for something yet to come.

_I know_.

I've got post-it notes and bits of string and a big board, like proper preparation-research people do. And just in case anything comes of all this silly war talk, which it won't, because I'm going to be prepared and put a stop to it all before it begins, I've got it all set up in a room with a big table with chairs all around it so I can talk to all the people that I need to talk to all at once, and there's a computer and a screen on the wall and I call it the war room. Not that I'll ever need a war room. That's why I'm doing research. Work.

Still can't get over that, if I'm honest.

Mostly what I'm doing is familiarizing myself with the information gained from Kovarian, but that's been easier said than done. The stuff, for instance, that was disguised as River's diary, has nothing to do with River. It's a list of places and dates, most of which mean absolutely nothing to me yet. There's Demon's Run, yes, there's V-Day on Correl, they are the prominent dates of the war, but I don't know what ninety-nine percent of them refer to. And why hide the dates of a war in a Tardis blue diary, what's the significance of that?

I won't bore you with the details, but the rest is just as frustrating.

And I won't dazzle you with all the super-important earth-shattering things that I've managed to learn because… well…

But there _will_ be. I've hardly started, I'm sure there's going to be _tonnes_ of amazing, mind-blowing, game-changing _stuff_ in the midst of all this.

There will be.

There will be at least one thing. The one I'm currently waiting for the Tardis to break the encryption on. She'll be a damn sight quicker than the Silence, given Gallifreyan is her native tongue. She's just not really being quick enough, but I'm not going to shout at her because I'm not going to risk her getting annoyed at me. I just wish she'd hurry up. But I haven't said anything.

I will make no secret of being impatient, however. And you won't blame me for it. This, aside from the fact that she was a Time Lord, is why the Keeper was killed, where all this _began_, the moment at which this all spiralled and here I am.

I gave it an old-fashioned loading bar when I started the decryption. Theoretically, it would remove the pain and the nerves of the wait, because I'd be able to see how far along it was. And that's fine, it does that. Only I keep _looking_ at it, every couple of seconds and it's not relaxing me. Because it's nearly finished. Because I'm close now, and this is important.

It's amazing, when you live for any considerable length of time, just how many things can happen that mean absolutely nothing. And that's not a bad thing, that's just how you get along. The vast majority of Things That Happen to _anybody_ mean absolutely naff all. But this… this makes breathing a bit of a chore, makes the old double-beat a bit erratic, dampens the palms. Makes you stand back and tell yourself to calm down, for heaven's sake, but you don't. You couldn't, even if you wanted to.

That last minute, I make no attempt whatever to hide the fact that I'm just waiting. There have been whole months in my life that have gone in quicker than that minute, and had less in them. I don't even think. I _can't_ even think, I don't dare.

It finishes. Opens. A main screen, gold on blue, welcoming me to the matrix. The last of it. The last scrap existing outside the Lock.

"Request vocal password for designated recipient."

That'll be me then.

All these years, never forgot that password. "Alison." Don't ask. I was a much younger man and the names of women held a significance I thought would never fade. I'm older now. Wiser. Moved on. Then again, like I say, I haven't forgotten.

Neither has the matrix, it would seem. Opens up, lets me in. Brings forward that which it has been told to give me. Video file, picture and sound. The Keeper speaking. At the sight of her the rushing in my ears, the pounding, stops dead for a terrible moment. She's smiling.

She begins, "How long did it take you to decrypt this?"

"Yeah, alright," I mutter back. "I'm not so close to the language as I once was, alright?"

"And how long to make him say the password?"

…What?

"Doctor, if you're there, we're sorry. You've probably suffered for them to get this far. You have nothing to fear." Smiling wider. "They've got nothing."

What? No.

Earth-shattering, yes, game-changer, yes, but not what I wanted, not what was supposed to happen. Nothing good.

The Keeper goes on. "All your hard work for nothing, all that time wasted. You expected me to sit here giving you the words to end the war. But the simple truth _is_, you idiots, there _is_ no word. No Answer to your Question. No name to give. You have _nothing_ and you never have done."

She lifts down the camera she was addressing, ready to turn it off. Close, gloating, eyes glittering, she announces, "We know what you are, Anna Kovarian. And you will not win. Well done for getting this far, though." And with one last lethal grin she shuts the camera off. Video ends, matrix closes down.

A ruse.

A trick.

A distraction for Kovarian so that I could get on with more important things.

Suddenly the war room feels terribly small and airless and I leave. Not in a hurry, though I'd like to, but I'm a bit shaky if I'm honest and speed isn't going to happen.

A trick. A trick _intended for somebody else_, which _I_ fell for. Sickened, lost, somehow I stumble back to the console room. I knock over the hat stand because it's there and I need to knock something over.

A trick and she _died_ for it. The Keeper recorded that, brought that to me, knowing at least that it would be stolen from her and very probably that she would… Sickened. Lost. Coherent thought not really an option. She was _killed_ for it, murdered, they had her killed, killed her dead in both her hearts and for _what_? A trick.

A joke.

A really twisted joke. I've stumbled, somehow, to the console and somehow managed to pull up the recording I found at that place where she… The one where Jessica walks out of the wall and kills her, and steals the infokey from round her neck. Playing, looping on the monitor. Just to prove that it happened.

That it happened because of that stupid, _twisted_ joke. 'We know what you are, Anna Kovarian.' Better luck next time.

I stop watching it, eventually. Lean forward, shut my eyes and ward off nausea. But I can still hear it.

And then, strangely, I feel the air move. Sensing something, that dim awareness of another presence.

Open one eyes and slide it sideways.

Directly in front of me is a little reading at the back of the console navigation board, the co-ordinates of my current position. And standing just behind me, leaning forward to read this over my shoulder, is a rather large gentleman, about six foot seven, I'd say, and about half that widthways, with skin the colour of dark chocolate and an afro like a washing-up brush, shirtless except for a beaded waistcoat. It rattles a little. I think that was what tipped me off that he was there. He's writing the co-ordinates on the inside of his forearm with a black marker that doesn't much stand out on his skin.

So I blink a few times and I try and straighten my head out a bit, and then I try again.

No. No, he's still there. I was right the first time. Enormous shirtless gent wearing, I notice this time, a pair of red flared trousers.

So I open the other eye and I turn my head up to him and I say the only word that comes immediately to mind.

"…Hello."

"Oh, hey, man," he says. American. Voice matches his appearance. I'd like to poke him and check that he's real, but that would seem rather rude if it turned out that he was. I like to think that, if my soul was going to be rend in twain by trauma and deliverance was to come as a figment of my imagination, my shattered mind would have the sense not to choose a form that was going to leave me humming the theme from Shaft for the rest of my days.

He doesn't look up, making sure the co-ordinates he has are exactly right and perfectly legible.

"Listen," he says, "I can see this ain't a good time for you, so I'm gonna go ahead and get out your way. But we need to talk, so I'll flash back in a couple of minutes, if it's all the same to you? Give you time to get your head on straight?"

Then his wrist beeps.

I'm not kidding and I'm not phrasing it badly, his _wrist_, ladies and gentlemen, _beeps_.

He turns it over to look at it, and the top is a strange mess of flesh and technology, a half-visible LED readout and some buttons part-muscle, part-metal. Sighs at it, "Goddamn thing." Then his wrist beeps again. "So I'm gonna catch you soon, brother." Claps one great massive hand between my shoulders, meant as a show of solidarity, succeeds only in knocking me across the console.

By the time I lift my head, his wrist is beeping for the third time. And he vanishes. So I hang where I am for a moment, and all capacity for thought or comprehension is utterly gone, as is my ability to so much as _move_, and I can do no more than breathe and mutter to myself.

Again, the only word that comes to mind.

"…_What_?"


End file.
